


Bad Day

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: What Maisie Knew (2012)
Genre: F/M, Family, Gen, Hurt Kid, Sad Kid, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maisie, Margo, and Lincoln have a bad day, but they're all together at the end of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SarahJeanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahJeanne/gifts).



> Thanks to my secret beta!
> 
> SarahJeanne, I hope you enjoy this treat!

Lincoln's phone vibrated in his pocket barely an hour into his shift, while the restaurant was still mostly empty. He was listening to a tale of woe from a woman whose purse cost more than he and Margo spent on rent for three months. He kept his _please tip generously, my kid needs shoes and underwear no one else has worn before_ smile in place until she stopped for breath. 

"Sorry," he said apologetically, "I just gotta," and waved toward the other end of the bar, where he had two other before-dinner drinkers.

"Oh, God, I've been keeping you, I'm sorry," she replied. It was just the right kind of slightly flustered apology to put him on track for a solid thirty percent. 

He gave her a sealing-the-deal smile and said, "No, hey, all part of the package," as he took a couple of backward steps. She dropped her gaze to her drink and he turned toward the register to tug his phone out and peek at the screen. 

There was a text waiting for him from Margo in uncharacteristic caps lock. CALL ME NOW.

Lincoln's stomach dropped, and he shoved his phone carelessly back into his pocket. He turned on his heel, looking for Kira, the floor manager. He caught her gaze and mouthed _help_ , and she nodded and touched her ear. Lincoln made himself go down to the far end of the bar and check on the guys there. He pulled a beer for a salesman in a well-worn suit who wasn't going to tip above ten percent no matter what Lincoln did. 

By the time he was done with that, Joanie was stepping up beside him. Lincoln said, "Thanks, sorry, I'll be right back," and headed into the back as fast as he could without actually running. 

He pulled his phone out again as he cut through the kitchens to the break room. He bit his lip over his choices, and then hit the button for Facetime. Whatever was going on, he needed to see Margo and Maisie. He only had a few seconds to stare into his own anxious face, trying to smooth it out into a convincing smile; it had been automatic a second ago and now he couldn't do it at all.

Margo's face replaced his, and the light around her was harshly bright, reflecting off the tears on her face. 

"Margo," he blurted before she could say a word; she looked like she was on the edge of falling apart. Margo tried to smile for him even as he heard Maisie's voice saying his name--trying to say his name, anyway. It came out more like _Ing-un_ , lost and plaintive like Maisie only ever sounded in the middle of the night when she woke up and couldn't find him or Margo.

"Let me see her," Lincoln said, because he was starting to get an idea of what that wall was behind Margo.

Margo just nodded slightly and then said, "Sweetie, remember you have to hold still." In a slightly less gentle tone she added, "I swear it's not as bad as it looks."

He got a brief swinging flash of somebody in a uniform sitting across from Margo, and then he was looking down at Maisie's face: blood on her chin, a cut livid in the middle of her swollen lip, and a red bruise around one side of her mouth like she'd taken a punch right in the teeth. Margo's hand was resting gently over the immobilizing plastic that kept Maisie from moving her head. Lincoln pressed a hand over his mouth, trying to hide his expression, because he knew he couldn't control it. Maisie tried to smile with her busted mouth--he could see at least one tooth missing--but she was still crying too.

He caught her trying to say his name again-- _Ing-un_ \--and then a mournful flood of vowel noises that made bright red blood trickle out of her mouth and down from her split lip. 

"Shh, Maze, it's okay, don't try to talk," Lincoln said. "You're gonna be okay. They're gonna take you to the doctor and get you all fixed up, and I'm gonna come meet you at the hospital, okay? You just gotta stay still like Margo said and let them take care of you."

Maisie sniffed, then choked a little, and a blue-gloved hand came in from the opposite side from where Margo was, blocking Lincoln's view of most of her face. The phone turned and Margo reappeared. 

"Her arm is broken," Margo said, her voice wavering but clear. "And she's knocked out two teeth. She cut the inside of her mouth, that's where most of the blood is from, it's just that it runs down her throat and--" Margo cut herself off and then said in a small, strangled voice, "But she's going to be fine."

Lincoln nodded. "What, um, what happened?"

Margo squeezed her eyes shut and more tears ran down her face, leaving Lincoln feeling incredibly helpless and far away.

"She was on top of the monkey bars at the park, and she stood all the way up on top. I started to walk over to her to tell her to get down and she slipped and--my God, Lincoln, I just keep hearing her scream."

Lincoln's whole body folded down as his stomach jerked; he could picture it horribly clearly, the thump of Maisie hitting the ground and her little voice raised in a shriek of pain, and the bright red blood that must have been everywhere.

"What hospital?" Lincoln asked, looking around for anyone he could tell that he had to leave _now_ , no compromises possible. Maisie was in an ambulance, strapped to a fucking backboard. 

"New York Presbyterian, on East Sixty-Eighth," Margo said. "But, Lincoln, do you have the papers? They're not in my purse."

"Oh, shit," Lincoln said. He did have the papers--everything they had on Maisie's custody, the divorce papers, the child support agreements, proof of income, the fucking Friend of the Court brief on how much child support they'd never been paid. Lincoln was supposed to fax it to the Medicaid office in the hopes that someone would believe that the parents Maisie actually lived with had exactly zero money available to buy insurance for her. He'd forgotten to do that before coming to work, and now Maisie was in an ambulance, strapped to a backboard, and she still didn't have health insurance. They were going to have to _pay_ for this somehow. 

Maisie made a noise, and Lincoln didn't need the missing consonants to interpret it as, "Bad word!"

Lincoln got halfway through saying, "Sorry, Maisie," and cracked up, even though it was completely the wrong thing to do. Margo started giggling too, helpless and hysterical, and then an adult's voice said, "We're here."

Margo stopped laughing like a switch had been flipped, looking stricken, and Lincoln said, "I'll be there as fast as I can. Tell them you're her guardian and her parents are out of the country, I'll bring the paperwork."

Margo nodded, looking grimly determined. Lincoln's phone went black as she hung up.

* * *

It was nearly half an hour later that Lincoln finally stumbled out of a cab and into the pediatric ER entrance with the thick manila envelope clutched in his hand. He hurried up to the main desk and said, "My daughter, Maisie Beale, she came in in an ambulance."

Lincoln had been learning to use that magic phrase with conviction-- _my daughter, Maisie_. Like most people he used it on, the woman didn't argue or demand proof. She checked her computer, and then she glanced from the manila envelope up to Lincoln's face, and _then_ she looked apologetic.

"I have the custody stuff here," Lincoln said. "The guardianships. Do you need that?"

"Yes," the woman said. "Ms. Beale explained the situation, but we still need to make sure everything is order before we can allow you to act as guardians."

Lincoln nodded obediently--freaking out was going to get him nowhere, he knew that. He had to stay calm for ten more minutes. He opened the envelope to pull out the most relevant paperwork as he said, "Okay, but they let Margo stay with her, right? She's not alone?"

"She's not alone," the receptionist assured him blandly. That wasn't exactly, _Yes, Margo is with her_ , but if Margo wasn't with Maisie she'd be out here looking for him and the paperwork, so Margo had to be there. Lincoln found the right envelope and handed it over, then dug out his wallet and passed his driver's license across. She entered some information, and just at the point where Lincoln was feeling ready to climb across the counter and try to type faster she pushed her chair over to a printer and picked up a little rectangle of plastic. It said PARENT on it in big letters and had his name underneath. 

"You can send Ms. Beale out to get hers when you get a chance, she has a visitor pass right now," the woman said, attaching a clip to his badge and passing it over to him. "Room four, down that way."

"Thank you," Lincoln said, and then thanked her again, less coherently, when she caught his sleeve and made him take his paperwork and ID with him. He clipped the badge to the edge of his vest and ran down the hallway until he heard Margo's voice; she was coming toward him, walking alongside a gurney. Maisie was lying on it, looking too small in that expanse of white sheet. The bruise around her mouth was dark purple now, and there was an ice pack on her arm, but she tried gamely to smile, and it was easier to make out her, "Lincoln!" this time.

Margo's eyes skipped quickly from his face down to his badge as Lincoln hurried toward them, and she grabbed him in a fierce hug. 

"Uh, we're here," the orderly pushing the gurney said, gesturing toward a door. Lincoln tugged Margo out of the way so the orderly could maneuver Maisie inside, and Margo didn't look up at all, just clutching his shirt and shaking. 

"Go get your new badge," Lincoln said softly into her hair, rubbing her back and watching over her head as Maisie was scooted into the room and the wheels of her gurney--bed?--were locked in place. "Take a minute if you need it. It's okay. I'm here now, I can stay with Maisie."

"I didn't take my eyes off her," Margo whispered against his chest. "I was watching the whole time, I just--"

"Hey, come on," Lincoln said, pulling back enough to meet her eyes. "I broke three bones before I was ten, my parents let me and my brothers run around five acres by ourselves. I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't have let her go to the other side of the playground without you, okay?"

Margo nodded, wiped her eyes, and said, "You should apologize to your mum, you must have scared her to death."

"I'm pretty sure she'd tell me Maisie is all the karmic retribution she requires," Lincoln said. "Go on, go get your badge. Take some deep breaths."

Margo nodded again, and this time she pushed away from him and headed down the hallway. Lincoln ducked into Maisie's room and she immediately reached for him with her good hand. "Lincoln! I'm getting a cast. It's gonna be yellow and then we can paint stripes on it."

"Oh, yeah?" Lincoln said, trying to keep his expression calm while Maisie was trying to smile through her bruises and swollen lip. If she could smile, he should be able to handle just looking at her, shouldn't he? It shouldn't hurt just seeing it. "What color stripes do you want? Like, red? Or pink?"

"Maybe pink," Maisie agreed. "Maybe green?"

"Orange is good," Lincoln offered.

"Margo said if I had black stripes I could be a bumblebee or a--"

Lincoln didn't catch the last word. "A what?"

The orderly gave him a disbelieving look and said, "A Hufflepuff."

"Hufflepuff," Lincoln repeated helplessly, trying to figure out what cartoon that came from. A book, maybe? Maisie didn't watch that many cartoons.

"Harry Potter," Maisie said, and her judgment came through loud and clear despite the mushiness of her words. "Margo! Lincoln doesn't know what Hufflepuffs are."

Lincoln looked over to find Margo standing in the doorway, now labeled PARENT in big letters on a badge that matched his own.

"Well," Margo said. "That's what Lincoln gets for working at night when we read Harry Potter before bed."

Lincoln had thought he was in on the bedtime ritual because he took his break faithfully every night at 8:30 and Facetimed with Margo and Maisie and reviewed The Schedule for the next day (which explained who was going to be where when and who was responsible for Maisie and who Maisie should call if somebody wasn't there for her when they were supposed to be). He'd been missing the part with reading Harry Potter, apparently.

"You and Margo have to tell me about it, then," Lincoln said. "Or maybe I could watch the movies, huh?"

Margo and Maisie made synchronized noises of disgust--clearly the movies were not an acceptable substitute. 

"Do you even know who _Harry Potter_ is?" Maisie demanded, sounding scandalized.

"He's, um," Lincoln said, trying to stretch out the one piece of information he knew-- _a wizard_ \--for as long as possible. He'd never thought he would regret refusing to read kids' books when he was in high school in this particular way. Lincoln looked around for help--the orderly might float him a clue--but there was a doctor standing in the doorway, a black woman in burgundy scrubs with a stethoscope around her neck and her hair in soft curls. She looked amused, and also like a useful distraction. 

"Hey, Maisie, look, your doctor's here."

The doctor gave him a merciful smile and came in, saying, "So, Maisie, I looked at your x-rays and your arm is broken like we thought. You're definitely going to need a cast. I'm going to put that on for you now, okay? Did you decide on a color?"

"Yellow and black," Maisie said definitely.

"Ahh, a Hufflepuff," the doctor agreed, nodding. 

Lincoln slumped over and hid his face against the side of Maisie's bed. Maybe he could get a copy of Harry Potter from the library. He didn't have a lot of free time between culinary school during the day and work at night, but he could skim through it and get the idea, at least. 

Margo folded down around him in a combination of hug and collapse, and Lincoln pushed himself upright at the same time he reached for her with his free hand, tugging her around to perch on his knee. She closed her hand with his around Maisie's good hand. A nurse had materialized, along with a cart of stuff for putting casts on. The doctor kept up a calm, soothing patter as she took the icepack away from Maisie's arm and gently slid a soft cover over Maisie's arm; even that made Maisie whimper, and Lincoln winced and felt Margo do the same.

"So, Maisie," Margo said, sounding very serious. "Should we tell Lincoln about Harry first, or about Hogwarts?"

"Hogwarts," Maisie said, her voice wobbling, and Margo nodded and launched into an explanation that Lincoln seriously hoped he wasn't going to be expected to remember, about a magic castle in Scotland that was also a school, with a house for Hufflepuffs, and something about badgers. They got off on a long tangent about some game played while riding magic broomsticks, and by the end of it Maisie's cast was done and Maisie was talking about bludgers instead of crying.

The doctor told them she would prescribe something for Maisie to take for pain and assured them that she'd probably only need it for a day or two. She asked Maisie what flavor she wanted her medicine to be.

"Lemon," Maisie said firmly, admiring her bright yellow cast. 

"Naturally," the doctor agreed, and said, "I'm going to get the hospital pharmacy to fill that and have it sent up so you don't have to make another stop on your way home, okay? The nurse will give you all the care instructions before you leave."

"Thanks," Lincoln said, and Margo echoed him while Maisie said a scrupulously polite, "Thank you, Doctor Thompson!"

"You're very welcome, Maisie," the doctor said, and then she headed out. 

Maisie went right back to chattering about Harry Potter and everything Lincoln had been missing out on, and didn't stop until the nurse returned with a pharmacy bag. She gave them all the instructions about bringing Maisie back to the hospital if her pain got worse, or if her hand got numb or turned blue, and then said offhandedly, "I see that you didn't have any insurance coverage. You can stop by the cashier on the way out."

Lincoln winced, and the money-anxiety settled heavily in the place his Maisie-anxiety had just been lifting from. 

But Margo said breezily, "Of course, thank you so much," and gathered all the papers and the pharmacy bag into her purse. Lincoln thought vaguely that they were going to insist on wheeling Maisie to the door, but they let him pick her up off the hospital bed and carry her out. Back near reception, Margo said, "This way," and Lincoln followed her until he realized that they weren't going to the cashier--they were cutting through another floor and out to the street.

"Hey," Lincoln said uncomfortably, even as he followed Margo onto the sidewalk. It was still daylight, which was weird. It felt like it ought to be the middle of the night. "We were supposed to pay."

Margo turned toward him and said, "Oh, did you make six thousand dollars in tips today?"

Lincoln jerked back from the sudden venom in her voice. "No, but--do you think it's going to be that much? We have to give them something, we--"

Margo sighed and rubbed her face. "It's not a dine and dash, Lincoln. They'll send a bill, they know where to find us. And we're going to need to go home and make some phone calls before we know anything about how we're going to pay."

She didn't say their names, but Lincoln realized that Margo meant they were going to have to call Susannah and Beale. They were going to have to tell them Maisie had gotten hurt, and then ask them to pay for it.

"Oh," Lincoln said, and the dread of the hospital bill was abruptly replaced by the dread of Susannah's reaction to the news. "Yeah."

"Yeah," Margo said, her shoulders slumping. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that about tips."

Lincoln shrugged. It was his job; he made what he made the way he made it. "I cashed out enough to take a cab home, come on."

"Oh, thank God," Margo said wearily, and she slipped her arm around him as they all turned together toward the hospital's cab stand.

* * *

Maisie had to eat before she could take the painkillers. The numbing stuff they'd put in her mouth was wearing off, and Lincoln had to coax her through eating a couple of poached eggs and some butterscotch pudding from a plastic cup. She alternated bites. Lincoln didn't argue. 

Then it turned out that lemon-flavored hydrocodone was gross. Maisie half-choked trying to spit it out, and then burst into hysterical tears; it took another half-hour before they could get the medicine into her. Margo was near tears herself by then. Lincoln was actually leaking, just barely managing not to sob. 

Maisie slumped quietly in Margo's arms while Lincoln put away the medicine bottle and rinsed out the cup of orange juice they'd given her as a chaser. Lincoln couldn't tell whether the painkillers were kicking in already, or if she was just exhausted from the whole ordeal. He felt like he could fall asleep right now himself, and he didn't doubt Margo was ready to drop.

Lincoln's phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out and turned off the alarm. It was his five-minute reminder to take his break so that he could talk to Maisie and Margo before Maisie went to bed. It occurred to him that he and Margo hadn't had dinner either. He wanted to cook, to fix something comforting, but there was nothing much in the fridge. He pulled out a carton of leftover fried rice and a plate of leftover pizza and took them back to the couch where Margo was sitting with Maisie.

Margo tilted her head toward Maisie and raised her eyebrows. Lincoln looked at her--she still had her eyes open, but just barely. Her face had already gone kind of slack like she was asleep.

_Almost_ , he mouthed to Margo, and then went and got a couple of beers and a fork. They drank and ate in silence, trading the fork back and forth for bites of rice, until Lincoln looked over and realized Maisie was completely out. 

"She's asleep," he said quietly. "You want me to put her in her bed?"

"I don't quite want to let her out of sight," Margo said hesitantly. "We've just drugged her to sleep."

"I think that's mostly the adrenaline falling off," Lincoln pointed out, but he pulled Maisie into his own lap and didn't go any further. Margo stretched and settled back on the couch with what was left of her beer.

"It's the middle of the night in England," she remarked. "And Spain. We can probably just leave messages for now."

Lincoln nodded, feeling relieved. Susannah was touring cities he'd never heard of in Spain and Portugal for the next few weeks; for some reason she had a significant fanbase in the Iberian Peninsula. Beale was, last any of them had heard, still in London, although he tended to relocate randomly. When they tried to call him for Maisie's seventh birthday, he was in Tunisia; he sent her a rug that arrived weeks later and made vague apologetic noises when Margo pointed out that Maisie might like getting her court-ordered child support--groceries, new clothes, trips out with her school friends--better.

"Susannah's gonna freak out again," Lincoln sighed. Susannah did that every couple of months, threatening to take Maisie away from them; a few times that had actually materialized into Susannah showing up and hovering over Maisie, taking her shopping and smothering her with attention for a couple of days before she decided that Maisie was really better off with Lincoln and Margo after all, coincidentally just when she really needed to go catch a flight or get back on the tour bus.

"She probably won't cancel tour dates," Margo reassured him, though they both knew that you could never say for sure with Susannah; maybe this was the time she would actually try to take them to court and contest their guardianships. Lincoln's, anyway. She couldn't touch Margo's. 

"Maisie's fine now," Margo went on. "And at least that's better than Beale. He's going to send flowers and forget to actually call and talk to Maisie until next week, and then he'll think it was her leg and not her arm."

"You want me to do both?" Lincoln asked. He could talk to Beale, whose dislike of Lincoln never really rose above the level of snide amusement. Susannah could get really awful with Margo, and they tried never to have them speak to each other, even just for Margo to hand off the phone to Maisie.

"No, it's fine. It's probably just leaving a message," Margo insisted.

Lincoln nodded and fished his phone out at the same time Margo did; they met each other's eyes and hit the call buttons at the same time.

Susannah's voice was in his ear instantly. "Hey, this is Susannah, leave me a message. Maisie, I love you, babe!" 

Lincoln rolled his eyes at that last as he always did; it was never Maisie who called Susannah, so that message was for everyone else but her, showing off how much Susannah loved her kid. "Hi, it's Lincoln," he said, even as he heard Margo saying in the same cool, talking-to-no-one tone, "Hi, it's Margo."

"Everything's fine now," Lincoln went on, listening to Margo echo him almost word for word, "but Maisie took a spill on the playground today and got pretty banged up. We had to take her to the doctor. Give us a call tomorrow, Maisie'll want to tell you all about it."

He didn't bother saying anything about money; Susannah would get that part all by herself and would either be pissed about it or eager to send money to make up for her absence. Asking in a voice mail wouldn't help. He hung up, and Margo took his phone from his hand and set it with hers on the coffee table.

Margo sat back and Lincoln realized she was still wearing the PARENT badge from the hospital. It made him aware of the dull pain in his chest where Maisie's shoulder was pressed against the clip of his own badge, jamming it against his ribs.

Maisie never called him and Margo anything but their names, and they were always careful only to refer to themselves as her guardians; _step-parents_ was too confusing with her actual parents out of the picture, to say nothing of their respective divorces. Lincoln could almost call Maisie his kid without self-consciousness, but the word _daughter_ was still something he just trotted out for other people when he needed them to believe that he belonged with Maisie. He'd realized before, in various ways, that this was for good, that he was committing to Maisie for the rest of her life. But somehow none of that had struck him in exactly the way that word--PARENT--was hitting him tonight.

"This is our life now, isn't it," Lincoln said softly.

Margo opened her eyes--shit, she'd been almost asleep, he shouldn't have woken her--and said, "Tomorrow will be better."

"No, I know," Lincoln shook his head. "I didn't mean it like that. I meant--all this time I've kind of been waiting for the other shoe to drop, like we were going to make some mistake or somebody else would realize that they made a mistake, and we wouldn't--I wouldn't get to have this life anymore, with this amazing woman and this awesome kid, I'd just have to go back to being this socially awkward bartender who can't keep a relationship going for more than six weeks. But this is us now, even on a bad day. Maisie's ours, this whole thing... we're a family now. Even when things go wrong."

"Especially when things go wrong," Margo corrected softly, shifting over to sit pressed up against his side, resting one hand on Maisie's back. "That's when you know who your family is."


End file.
